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November 11, 2016

Fri. Nov. 18, 2016

Read All 192 of my Daily Kos articlesor don’t.Some of my photosScroll down for story: I Played Chess With Hitler.Willamette View residents, if you see me ask for a safety pin (read this). If you want to vent, commiserate, and plot our next moves with fellow progressives a bunch of us usually end up at Waterfalls in the morning between 8-10. If you bring your own cup there are endless coffee refills for a dollar. I always have my laptop to keep up with breaking news. Yes, there is WiFi.Saturday, Nov. 19, 2016

Sick above to comment on Daily Kos

Lots of cartoons before the election depicted how Trump would decorate the White House. Many of us speculated that the White House would not only be way too small for him and his plastic creepy family; but there would be too many rules against ripping out walls to put in escalators and cathedral ceilings, and hanging crystal chandeliers. Now that Trump has to live there, a place he sees as downscale as Navin R. Johnson’s sharecropper house (right), he also wants to live at Trump Plaza.

Those with a psychological bent and real psychotherapists like me wrote about his malignant narcissism, his vanity, and his hedonism. Hell, if not for other factors I’d reluctantly accept even his misogyny and pussy grabbing. If that was all that was wrong with him and he wasn’t a demagogue, authoritarian personality, know-it-all, and enabler of white supremacists I could put-up with his personality disorders and character flaws.

However with Trump you get the whole package. His psychopathology, including his dangerous quick trigger temper combine with his lack of values. The narcissist’s lack of empathy combine with his couldn’t care less attitude about who he hurts.

His wife jokingly compared dealing with her son and husband as coping with two adolescents. When I hear commentators talking about Romney being Secretary of State and saying “the more adults in the room the better” I realize that Melania’s comment was a portentous warning.

Now we have Trump without a doubt being told by the Secret Service and perhaps the NYPD (at least on television) that it is absolutely unsafe for him to spend time in Trump Tower when he’s president.

It is insane that Trump is spending ay time at all in Trump Tower. The reasons are obvious to anyone that’s seen a few spy movies. It isn’t a joke. The Secret Service doesn’t make jokes. Their job is not just to protect a person, it is to protect our democracy.

My fear is that Trump with his misplaced but deeply help machismo sense of self will be the most difficult president to protect in modern times. And protect him we must.

The t-shirt at left, I would venture an educated guess, met with Trump’s approval. Somebody from the Secret Service needs to sit him down and say “Mr. President, welcome to the bubble. You have chosen to live in this the rest of your life.”

Meanwhile, back to the start of this story, none of the old jokes about the clownish Trump are the least bit amusing anymore.

I thought the NY Daily News was masterful in getting this front pages out on the streets by 3:00AM after breaking new. Now I shudder when I think that there was now way this clown could become president.

He will be President Trump and his family and loyalists will be running the country. Only Congress can restrain Trump and his team from following through on the authoritarian, and (to say the hell with Godwin’s Law), downright Hitlerian campaign promises.

Friday, Nov. 18, 2016Do we really need a Kent State moment?

If only we could pass a national presidential recall lemon law like those most states now have for certain consumer goods, including cars, it would read like this.

The National Presidential Lemon Law (NPLL) provides a remedy for voters who elected a president who in the judgement of a 2/3rds majority of the voters fails to meet the standards of quality and performance and is in their judgment taking the country on a dangerous course domestically and/or internationally: for example but not limited to denying civil liberties, subverting rights guaranteed in the Constitution, engaging in reckless military adventures, and diminishing our stature in the international community.

Put another way, the NPLL provides an alternative mechanism to impeachment to remove a president but it is not necessarily based on having to prove him unfit through articles of impeachment for Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors voted on by the House of Representatives, and tried and convicted in the U.S. Senate.

Although there may be presidents who disappoint, "lemon" is thought of as applying to presidents who may have misrepresented themselves during the campaign with significant lies and distortions, and with promises they couldn’t keep, and/or those who prove at some time during their tenure to be incompetent or lacking the mental stability to function in office.

Unlike the grounds for impeachment, the NPLL is meant to rely on the common wisdom of the people about whether the president is able to lead the country in accordance with the values of democracy set forth in the (amended) Constitution, the laws, and the customs of the land.

Thus with this law there are two ways to oust a president. One is the usual process of impeachment when he or she is accused and found guilty of high crimes or misdemeanors. The other, covered by the NPLL is by a 2/3rd majority popular national vote when that president is deemed to be a “lemon.”

In order to be declared a lemon a president and removed from office first 60% of the states must petition their state legislature to hold a statewide election. If the ballot measure passes by a simple majority in 60% of the states, over 50%, that is considered a vote for moving to a national election.

Once 60% of the states have passed such measures, within six months a national election must be held.

The same percentage requiring a 2/3rd for removing a president through impeachment holds for removing him through the national popular vote.

Unlike the national presidential election where a candidate can win the popular vote and loss the electoral college vote and thus the election, the higher standard of 2/3rds majority prevents a disgruntled group of voters from ending the results of a legal election.

The NPLL is meant to be an arduous process, even more difficult to be initiated than the impeachment process.

When the votes are certified within one week the president must vacate the office. At that time the vice president assumes the office of president.

THURSDAY, NOV. 17, 2016Afternoon edition:

Why not do what the Republicans did…. let it leak out that the Democrats, minority that they are in, will use every parliamentary means they can to block and obstruct everything the Republicans try to get through Congress. Many of us don’t care how this appears. Then if or when there is something they can justifiably comprise on they should do so. I do not think there is any benefit to saying they are willing to comprise with Trump at this point. If the Republicans could treat Obama as if he was not a legitimate president, then the Democrats can do the same with Trump. The Electoral College notwithstanding, Trump won on a series of egregious lies. If you buy a used car with sand in the transmission, you have recourse under the Lemon Law. Aside from the voters who voted happily for the racist, sexist, xenophobic Trump, the rest voted for someone based on the lies about Hillary and the many lies about how only he could accomplish a bunch of “Make America Great” slogans.

Thursday, Nov. 17, 2016A registry for legal Muslim immigrants should be a wake-up call if he initiates it! It’s not only the racist and xenophobic demagogic things Trump can legally mandate, including how far he wants to push the pro-life agenda; but the empowerment of the white supremacists to take violent action.We no longer should call these people by the sanitized term alt-right.

These photos separate on day from another.

Weds. Nov. 16, 2017

Click above or scroll down for story.

I feel fully engaged. My shell shock at his win and avoidance lasted a few hours after he was declared the winner, and I was asleep during that time. Then I woke up at 3:00 AM and couldn’t resisted turning on MSNBC. Now I wake up every morning, turn on the TV and read the liberal websites. It gets crazier and crazier and the news coverage at least on the liberal MSNBC (of Bannon and Guliani, the amateurishness of the transition team, the Republican Trump apologists — ) depicts nothing but chaos and turmoil. I have to say that as bad as this seems for the country, it vindicates us. It also leave running the government to careerists who have run the nuts and bolts of the government through several administrations. My fear is once their new appointed bosses take over they will resign. That’s when the trains stop running on time.As I sometime do, last night I woke at around 2:00 AM and the skeleton of a story came to me based on all the Trump surrogates infuriatingly spouting bullshit about how the Bannon they know couldn’t be the racist anti-Semitic champion of the alt-right because the Bannon who they work closely with was a Navy veteran, Harvard MBA, movie producer, and generally a hail fellow well met.Here’s the story I came up with as I sat in our Waterfalls Cafe coffee shop. All the facts in it are true — and fascinating and were unknown to me when I started the story — except that Leonard Goldbaum never existed.

I’m a Jew. In 1939 I was hired by Adolf Hitler to be his dog “ psychologist. “ As an animal behavior specialist of some renown, despite the fact that I was Jewish, I was hired to work in the little known “Woofan SS” experiment (reference).

In the 1920’s I became on of many new researchers in the field on animal psychology. We believed dogs were in many ways comparable in intelligence with humans and could be taught to understand and communicate with us.

When the Nazi Party gained control they recruited us to continue our work under state supervision because they believed in the bond between humans and nature.

Hitler was a dog lover who lavished attention on his German Shepherds Blondi and Bella. He believe dogs could be taught to communicate effectively with humans and be used even more effectively in wartime.

We were having some amazing success in the “Woofan SS experiment (see link) and I was instrumental in teaching a German pointer name Don to back out “Hungry! Give me cake!”

I am deeply ashamed to say that I ignored rumors that some of our most intelligent dogs were confiscated from Jews who I later learned were sent to be murdered in the death camps.

When the Fuhrer learned of the breakthroughs we were having he asked our director to send him his best animal psychologist to work with Blondi and Bondi. When told I was Jewish he said that didn’t matter as long as this information was kept secret.I first meet Hitler and his dogs in his apartment above the Reich Chancellery. The dogs took to me immediately. I dread to think what would have happened if they hadn’t. Blondi and Bondi frolicked on the floor with me much to Hitler’s amusement.I told him that we’d need to work gradually to establish rapport before serious training could begin. He was impatient but understood when I told him that this had to be a gradual process, which was true. By reputation I knew that one did not try to deceive Hitler, but when in his presence you knew that his penetrating gaze was nothing less than a foolproof lie detector.I typically visited the dogs once a week. Hitler made every effort to be there with us and on occasion rescheduled out appointments so he could participate in the training since it was crucial that he be able to communicate with Blondi and Bondi as well or better than I could.One day have a good training session with the dogs I admired a beautifully carved chess set on a side table. Hitler asked me if I played chess and I told him I did, but was hardly a chess master. His eyes lit up and he told me about the time he was only 20 and he played chess with Lenin who was 40 at the time. He told me he beat him. He pointed to a picture on the wall which I’d noted before but had thought nothing of. He said that it was an etching made by his art teacher Emma Lowenstramm, a Jew, who witnessed the game (reference). I was taken aback that there was no sense of prejudice when he casually noted that she was Jewish.As the war took up more and more of his attention he had less time for our training sessions. The dogs had made progress. They had learned at least 100 command words, nothing more than tricks, but Hitler was delighted. To some extent they could communicate their wishes. Ranked against the dogs in our program they would be mid-range in talent. As far as our chess games went I was clearly the lesser player. I did win from time to time and Hitler was very gracious. The rumors that if you played chess with Hitler you’d better allow him to win were unfounded. For one thing, he was a good enough player to know if you missed an obvious move. For another, he enjoyed the challenge of playing against someone of near, if not equally, as talented as he was.After the war of course I learned about what the Israeli Declaration of Independence calls the extermination of six millions Jews the Nazi holocaust,* I discovered once the camps were liberated that the Nazis systematically murdered my brethren and almost all my extended family.My wife died a natural death in 1943. I managed to escape from Germany to Switzerland and then made my way to England with the help of an SS Colonel and fellow animal psychologist from the SS unit where worked. I feel we are lucky we had no children. As I write this I feel relieved that I too am terminally ill. I no longer want to live. I know that it is cowardly to want to escape my guilt. But so be it. I will die knowing that I am one of the few people who was as close to being a friend to Hitler as anyone could have been.By Hal Brown, 2016Authors note: The word holocaust only appears once in the Israeli Declaration of Independence where it is not capitalized.

The photos like this are used as day-spaces instead of horizontal lines. All were taken by me.

Speaking of trains, many homeless people like this sleep in from of Union
Station in Washington.

Despite the look on his face in the photo, don’t rest easy if you think the third in line to the presidency has been really been giving the slouching Trump more than fleeting pause.

from Ryan’s workout shoot with Time: www.huffingtonpost.com/…He be may showing a momentary flash of uneasiness actually being next to someone physically much more imposing, who also knows infinitely more about governing than he does.

Hell, Ryan knows more about governing than Trump’s entire team except for Pence, creepizod Tea Partier, and way out there Christian conservative that he is.

Unfortunately, once out of Ryan’s presence Trump will try to assert the power of the presidency and show that despite his small hands, and Ryans YUUUGE hands and imposing biceps, he is the big enchilada.

Ryan will be the biggest check on Trump’s most dangerous exclusions into Bannon-land. He will be able to develop working relationships with sensible Republicans and with Democrats. I can see him sitting down with Chuck “Take No Prisoners” Schumer and hammering out deals to avoid Trump’s taking the country into total Aramageddon lava from the sky level chaos. There will however be Perfect Storm chaos at home and abroad because of Trump.

This morning’s story: www.dailykos.com/…Meanwhile, back to the photo: Pence has what can only be called a shit-eating grin on his face.

I really believe he knows it is only a matter of time before the wreckage of the demolition derby I described this morning (see picture) will need someone who knows how to run a government to order in the tow trucks.

Prence is likely to have a hard time with the egotistical and privileged personalities involved in Trump’s inner circle; but I expect he will secretly develop alliances in the Senate with both Republicans and Democrats.

At least Pence won’t be in a position to force pregnant woman who have miscarriages to provide funerals for the discharged fetal tissue like he did in Indiana.

Here’s another interesting picture (to me at least). McConnell, Donald, and Melania all seem to be looking in the same direction. What is Melania thinking?

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Make no mistake, the transition portends what his administration will be… I’ve been to a county fair demolition derby. Incredible noise, but rarely is anyone seriously injured because there’s no room for the cars to go very fast on the dirt or mud. At least in these events the drivers have some basic — if minimal — skill.

… 9-11, Pearl Harbor, what if the south won the Civil War, this country has just gone to shit worse than mere words can describe. As if it isn’t bad enough that it will be amateur hour the White House, the cast of characters will include genuinely evil people.

As I read and hear about the possible choices to head up departments words like “chilling” don’t convey how bad, how utterly dangerous, it will be.

Clare Lopez, reportedly on the short list for an advisory position in the White House, thinks Muslims are infiltrating the government.

Praise for Reince Priebus is another sign of how we’re lowering the bar for Trump

Priebus has no experience in government. Even then his supposed level-headedness assumes he’ll have any influence moderating Bannon’s extremism. Andy Card was an experienced choice for Bush's Chief of Staff, but don’t forget who had the most influence: Karl Rove.

Guiliani is barely containing his gloating when asked if he’s going to be Secretary of State? Obama is in Greece and supposedly will try to convince NATO countries not to worry….
This is from Politco: Trump’s first ambassador: Barack Obama

On his last foreign trip as president, the task ahead of Obama is enormous: Reassuring the world about a successor he said couldn’t possibly win. You remember how you felt with Henry Kissinger and Condi Rice… now compare them to Rudy Fucken Guiliani?

What job will retired Lt. General Michael Flynn have? Will lunatic Milwaukee county sheriff David Clarke actually end up heading the 230,000 employee Homeland Security Department. If Comey ends up out, how about Joe Arpaio to head up the FBI?” We are in for it. The world is in for it. Chaos and madness had started.

Monday, Nov. 14, 2016Bedtime note after watching Lawrence O’Donnell:What a choice (apparently) between war monger maniac, Jack D. Ripper Bolton and Rudy Guiliani as Secretary of State. The former knows something about foreign policy having been ambassador to the U.N. but would make the rest of the world even more terrified of the United States than they already are with Trump. Rudy was a prosecutor and NYC mayor and the city didn’t fall apart, although he is an evil, soulless person. He’s the saner choice between the two but he knows nothing about foreign policy…. oh great…. and Obama is on his way to reassure Angela Merkel that Trump isn’t about to bring chaos and crisis to the world. Now with that reassuring note I am going to bed.This is the message I posted on the PDX Resistance Facebook page:This picture (above right) is my Michigan State University ID… back then I was you and you were me. Now I want to feel like I can be a part of stopping the unfolding destruction we as a country have embarked on if only by supporting you and writing articles on Daily Kos.The early 1970’s was another time where being part of a movement where, no matter the odds against us, we felt we had to do whatever we could to win.When May of 1970 rolled around with the Vietnam War raging on and our friends dying, with Kent State Massacre being the catalyst, like all my friends I was ready to take a more active role in the battle so I became a student activist. Along with millions of others of my generation we took on the government and against tremendous odds we won. Finally the United States pulled out; but not before more than 58,000 Americans died, and estimates of total deaths go up to nearly 4 million.Now it is up to you, but know that those of my generation, and the even older generation who fought for civil rights, are 100% behind you. When you look at us try not to see white haired and wrinkled geezers but remember what we looked like back in our day. You will be senior citizens someday too, and look back at the fight against Trumpism, a fight that you will suffer many setbacks in, but eventually you too will win.

I just heard this from THOM HARTMAN on Progressive radio. He said he does question the legitimacy of President Trump, reminding us that Trump questioned, really disputed, the legitimacy of President Obama for almost eight years. Trump accused the president of fraud.

Now I accuse Trump of a different kind of fraud, and not the comparatively minor fraud of Trump University.

He committed a fraud by taking in many of his zealous supporters with lie after lie after lie, starting on day one of his campaign with his claiming most Mexican illegal immigrants were rapists and murderers.

He said they should elect him based on a fabric of lies.

How can we accept the “legitimacy” of a president who blatantly lied about so many things to win? I won’t parse words, I know the dictionary definition of legitimate but also know that there are secondary meanings that are in common usage:

1.

a. Being in compliancewiththelaw;lawful:a legitimatebusiness.

b. Being in accordancewithestablished or acceptedrulesandstandards:legitimateadvertisingpractices.

c. Valid or justifiable:a legitimatecomplaint.

d. Based on logicalreasoning:a legitimatededuction.

2. Born of legallymarriedparents:legitimateoffspring.

3. Of,relatingto, or ruling by hereditaryright:a legitimatemonarch.

4. Of or relating to drama of highprofessionalqualitythatexcludesburlesque,vaudeville,andsomeforms of musicalcomedy:thelegitimatetheater.

Yes. He is the lawfully elected president. In that respect he is the legitimate president. The fact that he won enough Electoral College votes doesn’t matter to me, because so many of those votes came from people who believed his lies.

​If indeed Obama was born in Kenya, he wouldn’t have been legitimate president. He would have been an illegitimate and a fraudulent president.

Trump is not my president. Not because I didn’t vote for him. Rather he’s not my president because enough of the people who made the difference between his winning and losing voted for him because they believed his lies.

Barring a miracle, the Electoral College is about to elect a charlatan as president.

Thank you, Rutherford B. Hayes: The Posse Comitatus Act and Why We Need It Now More Than Ever

Maryland National Guard Sixth Regiment fighting its way through Baltimore, Maryland, 20 July 1877

Ironically In 1876, Hayes was elected president in one of the most contentious elections in national history. He lost the popular vote to DemocratSamuel J. Tildenbut he won an intensely disputed electoral college vote after a Congressional commission awarded him twenty contested electoral votes. The result was theCompromise of 1877, in which the Democrats acquiesced to Hayes's election and Hayes ended all U.S. military involvement in Southern politics. (from Wikipedia)

I don’t feel about writing an long history article about this, but the mere fact that I had to look this up is sobering, to say the least, appalling to say a bit more, and chilling to really lay it out the way it is.

The question is whether or not Trump could federalize the national guard to do his will inside the country.

The answer is that only governors can activate the guard to enforce the law. I thought this was the fact but had to look it up:

The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385, original at 20 Stat. 152) signed on June 18, 1878 by President Rutherford B. Hayes. The purpose of the act – in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807 – is to limit the powers of the federal government in using federal military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States. It was passed as an amendment to an army appropriation bill following the end of Reconstruction, and was subsequently updated in 1956 and 1981. en.wikipedia.org/…

In doing a little research I discovered that federal troop were actually employed during the Hayes administration in 1887, a year prior to the Posse Comitatus Act. They were used to put down the Great Railroad Strike.For history buffs there’s a lot of information about it here. Suffice to say, as the picture on the right shows, it wasn’t a pretty picture.

Those of us who were aware of the shootings at Kent State know what can happen when the forces of “law and order” feel they have the license to use deadly force. I will spare you the iconic Pulitzer Prize winning picture from May, 4, 1970. You can see it here. If you’re too young to remember this, it was the seminal domestic event that lead to student strikes across the United States. If you’re my age and were in college at the time, as a Kos reader, I expect you participated in them.

Not to be outdone the lesser tabloid trash-monger claims to have ultra-top secret national security information too.

I expect all of you know that Donald Trump and NationalEnquirerCEO David Pecker have been friends for years. ( nymag.com/… ).

This morning, once again I had to go through the check-out aisle of magazine Hell. Only now the election is over and the National Enquirer’s hero defeated their treasonous villain.

Yet what do I see next to the pre-election edition of the equally in the tank for Trump and anti-hillary Globe (left)?

Of course the usual heavy on red and yellow on black National Enquirer cover screaming another hateful message at me and my fellow mostly liberal Portland, Oregon shoppers.

The National Enquirer is telling hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of shoppers around the country that Hillary and Huma are going to jail for treason, influence peddling, and bribery.

Kind of given less prominence between that headline and the ones about the sex abuse cover-up, the secret hospitalization and truth about the gay affair, and Hillary being caught destroying Obama’s legacy is the absolutely incredible bombshell about Putin’s spy file.

If true, the CIA must love this.

Not the Washington Post, not the New York Times, not Newsweek, Time nor Mother Jones.

Not even from Wikileaks. The National Enquirer scopes all these investigative news organizations with one of the biggest scoops since the Rosenberg spy case.

I was already seething with anger as I was about to click publish when I thought I checked the National Enquirer online and, not to my surprise, found they are shamelessly gloating over predicting Trump would win (left).

So, readers, here’s my poll. My answer is “other” because I have opened it and used my iPhone to take pictures of the articles in case I

I did it so you wouldn’t have to.On the protests: The nightmare scenario is that Trump orders the National Guard (can he do that?) to stop the protests using non-lethal force --- that he would even have to add non-lethal force is incredible thought.... but of course this could lead to lethal force from both sides.. Kent State?Would soldiers who are after, all citizens too, actually using any kind of force against non-violent protests?Warning signs will come when we learn of his appointments.... that a sherrif -- however unhinged as David Clarke -- is being mentioned to head Homeland Security is appalling. That a mere county sheriff, even from a big city like Milwaukie, without the credibility of even a big city police commissioner like William Bratton (NYC) would even be mentioned to head up Homeland Security is strange, but this man is dangerous. Read this….
Trump’s Dr. Jekyll could stop Mr. Hyde from Tweeting this morning:

Sat., Nov. 12, 2016

A pretty photo with a grim reminder.

The author of this NY Review of Books article , Masha Gessen, was interviewed by Rachel Maddow. We, as a group, should understand that there is a human tendency among most (not all) people to be optimistic. This applies to how some pundits, and people we talk to, are trying to normalize Trump. How cn we expect a man whose campaign showed him to be anything but normal turn around and become a normal president? We must be pragmatic, and neither succumb to optimism nor pessimism because of our own psychological make-up. We must be realistic, weigh the evidence pragmatically, and if that leads us to be pessimistic, so be it. From the article:

More dangerously, Clinton’s and Obama’s very civil passages, which ended in applause lines, seemed to close off alternative responses to his minority victory. (It was hard not to be reminded of Neville Chamberlain’s statement, that “We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analyzing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will.”) Both Clinton’s and Obama’s phrases about the peaceful transfer of power concealed the omission of a call to action. The protesters who took to the streets of New York, Los Angeles, and other American cities on Wednesday night did so not because of Clinton’s speech but in spite of it. One of the falsehoods in the Clinton speech was the implied equivalency between civil resistance and insurgency. This is an autocrat’s favorite con, the explanation for the violent suppression of peaceful protests the world over

The second falsehood is the pretense that America is starting from scratch and its president-elect is a tabula rasa. Or we are: “we owe him an open mind.” It was as though Donald Trump had not, in the course of his campaign, promised to deport US citizens, promised to create a system of surveillance targeted specifically at Muslim Americans, promised to build a wall on the border with Mexico, advocated war crimes, endorsed torture, and repeatedly threatened to jail Hillary Clinton herself. It was as though those statements and many more could be written off as so much campaign hyperbole and now that the campaign was over, Trump would be eager to become a regular, rule-abiding politician of the pre-Trump era.

But Trump is anything but a regular politician and this has been anything but a regular election. Trump will be only the fourth candidate in history and the second in more than a century to win the presidency after losing the popular vote. He is also probably the first candidate in history to win the presidency despite having been shown repeatedly by the national media to be a chronic liar, sexual predator, serial tax-avoider, and race-baiter who has attracted the likes of the Ku Klux Klan. Most important, Trump is the first candidate in memory who ran not for president but for autocrat—and won.

For political nitty gritted political junkies, let me add this article. My subheading is that the Trump Executive Branch machinations, with the personality clashes and conflicts we read about, won’t be any different than how it was in his campaign. Here’s proof.

The bitter infighting that plagued Donald Trump’s campaign during the Republican presidential primary is starting to spill over into his team’s efforts to establish an administration and political operation, according to more than half a dozen sources familiar with the planning efforts.

Those rifts and others are complicating what was an already a herculean task for Trump’s team: building a massive new government for a man who has never held public office.

“It's the same situation as in the primary – everyone has theknives out for each other,” said a Republican operative who worked with the campaign and is now advising people on the transition team.Read article

Read article. If you see me I will have lots of extra safety pins to hand out. I got to Freddy’s at 7 and bought the last pack of 50.

The Safety Pin Promise

The Promise

If you wear a hijab, I’ll sit with you on the train.

If you’re trans, I’ll go to the bathroom with you.

If you’re a person of color, I’ll stand with you if the cops stop you and/or whenever you need me.

If you’re a person with disabilities, I’ll hand you my megaphone.

If you’re LGBTQ, I won’t let anybody tell you you’re broken.

If you’re a woman, I’ll fight by your side for all your rights.

If you’re an immigrant, I’ll help you find resources.

If you’re a survivor, I’ll believe you.

If you’re a Native American, I’ll stand with you to protect our water, your burial grounds, and your people.

If you’re a refugee, I’ll make sure you’re welcome.

If you’re a union member, fighting for one, or fighting for $15/hour, I’ll be there.

If you’re a veteran, a college student, a member of the working or middle class, I’ll fight against austerity measures and for more publically funded assistance for all.

If you’re sick or just human, I’ll take up the fight for universal healthcare.

If you’re tired, me too.

If you need a hug, I’ve got an infinite supply.

If you need me, I’ll be with you. All I ask is that you be with me too.

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What do I think about and what I do I think about it?

May, 1, 2016

I migrated everything from April to the basement file cabinet, so fitting of Spring, this blog starts anew, unfortunately, again it’s Trump on my mind. The archives for the two months I have been sharing cyberspace with billions of bloggers are below.

If you are a new reader, welcome. I do this blog alone, but always welcome critiques and ideas from you, I mean you, whoever is actually reading these words.